Where Islam spreads, freedom dies

Regular readers of the blog will recall a post I made about 7 weeks ago, speculating that jihadists might be involved in the wave of forest fires that was sweeping Europe. Today, Russian intelligence has confirmed it.

Al-Qaeda has been blamed for a recent series of forest fires across Europe, as the head of Russia's Federal Security Service claimed they were set by arsonists as part of the group's low-cost attack strategy.

"One should note that setting fires to forests in the countries of the European Union is a new tendency in al-Qaeda's strategy of a 'thousand cuts'," Alexander Bortnikov said, according to state news agency RIA Novosti, at a meeting of heads of security agencies.

In linking al-Qaeda to the deadly wildfires, Mr Bortnikov pointed to calls to launch a "forest jihad" by various extremist websites which he said also publish detailed instructions about how and where to best carry out arson.

He said it was very difficult for special services to find and prosecute such arsonists.

Deadly fires have swept through forest land in EU countries such as Portugal and Spain over the past few months, killing scores of people and forcing thousands to evacuate.

In its continuing campaign against the West, al-Qaeda has vowed to "bleed the enemy to death" by resorting to inexpensive, low-scale attacks it refers to as a "strategy of a thousand cuts".